AHC: Get the Roman empire as far east as the Alexandiran empire

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While retaining as much of its western territory as possible how would we get Rome to expand as far east as Alexander was able to?
 
An Alexandrian egomaniacal General who is given free rein (perhaps by an Emperor worried what he'll do at home) seems most likely. Also, the Parthians get buggered somehow, so Iran is open for the taking.
 
An Alexandrian egomaniacal General who is given free rein (perhaps by an Emperor worried what he'll do at home) seems most likely. Also, the Parthians get buggered somehow, so Iran is open for the taking.

Perhaps an ATL Pompey without the Republic blowing itself up to distract him? He was an Alexander fanboy after all.....
 
Somehow build a suez canal.
That way, rome could conquer the Arabian peninsula and strike deep into mesopotamia and hold it.
After that, they could go into Persia and try to conquer all the way into Indi. .
 
Somehow build a suez canal.
That way, rome could conquer the Arabian peninsula and strike deep into mesopotamia and hold it.
After that, they could go into Persia and try to conquer all the way into Indi. .
how would suez canal help at all in Mesopotamia
 
The hardest point is that Rome in 100 CE, must conquer not one, but two powerful empires. The Arsacid Dynasty of Eranshahr and the Kushanshahs. The Kushan in this period too, are certainly the more dominant between the Arsacid and them and in a more foreign climate.
 

Ban Kulin

Banned
Railroads would do it. Before them, impossible.
Well Dacia was conquered purely for the gold. As soon as it was gone, Dacia was ditched. I would imagine that it would be the same with Parthia.
Yeah because it was cheaper and easier to conquer Dacia than to do equitable trade with the tribes. Raiding them didn't give much value.

The Romans are better off doing what they did in reality, invading rich fertile Mesopotamia and sacking Ctesiphon every generation or so.
 
Trajan was on the way to conquering Parthia (he even had the capital), but basically decided to quit while he was ahead, keep Mesopotamia and go home (something about being too old to follow in the footsteps of Alexander the great, really he was just worried about going into the Iranian plateau). On his way back, he was attacked by a new Parthian force, and had to give up control of the Parthian core to stop their incursion into the new province of Mesopotamia.

Rome's main disadvantage in the Iranian plateau was cavalry. Lets say Trajan somehow gets more cavalrymen (brings more to begin with, bings or makes a deal with steppe nomads, bribes local lords, anything really). That disadvantage is not negated but severely reduced. He feels he can keep going, his army is ready for the terrain and is looking for a fight so is not caught off guard wile pulling out as it was OTL. Trajan takes southwestern Parthia. The populous and mountainous northeast is made into a protectorate, the rest is Desert, so all the romans really need there is control of the roads and tribute from local tribes (easier said than done, but decentralized tribes are Rome's specialty). There were plans to ally with the Kushans, so I assume they would end up independent but allies (not quite the same as Alexander's empire, but pretty close).

Let's also, for the sake of stability, say that the ensuing Jewish revolt/religious war doesn't happen and Trajan can just focus on stabilizing his vast new realm.

Something like this:

roman parthia.jpg
 
I actually think a good POD is for a more succesful Domitian.

If Domitian didn't have to cut short his dacian campaign he could have pacified the region and installed a friendly client king that sent rome gold, as opposed to leaving Decebalus.

Further, if you let his son survive, lets name him Titus Flavius Dacianus, then he would be in a good position to go after parthia. You can even have him use Trajan as his primary general in the campaign if you want to.
 

Cryostorm

Monthly Donor
So basically typical Roman reasoning of “because we can.”
Well the whole Veni, Vedi, Vici saying really does sum up Rome's look on the world and empire. The fact that the (insert random Persian dynastic state) is the only real peer threat only makes it a worthy challenge.
 
Rome takes Partia and then proceeds to have a massive internal crisis and collapses due to overextention. You could get Persian romance languages, which would be cool.
 
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